Like all French citizens, Jews of French nationality who reached the required age were mobilized for what came to be known as the Phoney War. Many immigrant Jews joined the Régiments de Marche des Volontaires Etrangers (RMVE) or other foreign volunteer units in the service of France. Adam Rayski and G. Kenig, editors of the Naïe Pressewere among those enlisted. Kenig was sent to the front in May 1940, when German troops invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and then France.
The leaders of the clandestine Jewish section of the M.O.I., Jacques Kaminski and Edouard Kowalski, worried by the police and threatened as Communists, left the capital, soon followed by Louis Gronowski, national leader of the M.O.I. In their absence, Albert Youdine became the Parisian head of the Jewish section.
Before long, the French army was in complete collapse. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were taken prisoner. In the RMVEs, large numbers of foreigners, including immigrant Jews, ill-equipped and ill-prepared, were killed or captured. The exodus was massive. It affected Parisians from early June 1940.
German forces advance. On June 16, Marshal Pétain becomes President of the Council. On the 17th, he called on the French to stop fighting and asked the Germans for an armistice. In response, on June 18, 1940, General de Gaulle refused the armistice on BBC radio from London, and launched his appeal to the French resistance, known as the “Appel du 18 juin”, which was broadcast but not recorded. In a speech broadcast and recorded on BBC radio on June 22, 1940, de Gaulle called on the “Free French to continue the fight”. This marked the birth of“Free France ” outside France’s borders.
